


The Mask That Comes Undone

by aeli_kindara



Series: Supernatural Codas [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Dean Winchester in Hell, Episode: s14e01 Stranger in a Strange Land, Flashbacks, Gen, M/M, Mark of Cain, Michael Possessing Dean Winchester, POV Alternating, Sam and Cas and co are general badasses, Stanford Era, Teen Winchesters (Supernatural), Whump, in which Sam is the accidental King of Hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 09:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16323761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: Dean is falling. Down, down, down.He comes to with his face on the library table. Smooth wood, scuffed in places they’ve been careless cleaning the guns. His mouth feels chalky, eyes gummed with sleep. A sense of dread pounding black under his skin.He’s been here before.(In which Michael has Dean trapped in memories, and Sam & co are trying to get him out.)





	The Mask That Comes Undone

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what happened. I started a nice little coda and then it grew like an extra 10,000 words.
> 
> Warnings for some body horror and brief suicidal ideation. Also, there are a couple small references to Hurricane Katrina (re: the timing of the Pilot and Dean's hunt in New Orleans beforehand), but nothing extensive.
> 
> Title from Metallica's "Some Kind of Monster."

### I. 

Dean is falling. Down, down, down.

He comes to with his face on the library table. Smooth wood, scuffed in places they’ve been careless cleaning the guns. His mouth feels chalky, eyes gummed with sleep. A sense of dread pounding black under his skin.

He’s been here before.

What happened? He can’t remember. There’s an empty bottle on the table at his right hand, a finger of amber whiskey left in the glass. There are no folders before him, no books — no pretense.

He turns over his hands. His fingernails are clean, smooth-edged. He stares, and it’s like his vision doubles: he can see the dried blood, dark and flaking, beneath them.

Memory? Prophecy? _What happened?_

He has a nagging feeling there is something he’s forgetting — something massive, something monstrous. Something that will alter the world as he knows it.

The skin on the inside of his forearm is throbbing. It’s a knot of fiery ugliness, like a fish hook through infected flesh. Fish hooks — he should know. Pulled that one often enough himself, back in the day.

Dean twitches the sleeve of his flannel lower, tries to pull it all the way over the bones of his wrist. He doesn’t need to look to see the Mark.

He reaches for the rest of the whiskey.

\---

They capture Michael on a Thursday, in a weedy lot outside Pocatello. The trap works — it takes Sam a little convincing, but Garth volunteers to make contact, to pretend he wants what Michael’s offering — and the holy oil works too, the Enochian handcuffs.

They don’t try the archangel blade.

Michael keeps smiling even after he’s bound in silver and spellwork, smiling with Dean’s face. Cas backhands him hard, then stares down at his bloody knuckles. Michael laughs.

He murmurs in Dean’s voice all the way back to the bunker. Cas sits in the backseat with him, all thirteen hours, thunder on his face and the archangel blade in his hand, point pressed to Dean’s ribs.

“You’re really going to use that. On me,” Michael says. The cadence of the syllables dropping from Dean’s lips makes Sam want to jerk the Impala’s wheel into a tree. “On your brother. Oh — you think it might not kill him? Isn’t that an awfully big risk to take?”

Sam turns up the radio — _Some Kind of Monster._ Dean used to hum it to calm his nerves. It’s not having quite the same effect on Sam.

“Maybe I let you capture me,” comments Michael. “Maybe I _want_ you to take me back to your bunker. What will your army think of you — unwilling to kill the enemy they’ve been fighting since long before they even knew who you were?”

Sam meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Dean would hate that hat,” he says. “You look like a newspaper boy.”

Michael only smiles.

\---

“ _— look like a newspaper boy.”_

Dean blinks awake.

Another day, another bottle. He’s stopped trying to hide them from Cas and Sam; he hasn’t _seen_ Cas and Sam in weeks.

They must have given up on him. Decided he’s too great a danger for human contact; decided to entomb him here, where no one can get hurt. He’s tried their phones, more times than he can count, without an answer. He’s stopped trying.

The need for violence aches in the joints of his hands. They tremble, but not as much as they should.

_What happened? What did he do?_

_“Cas, keep a hold of him,”_ says Sam’s voice — Sam’s disembodied voice. Dean feels phantom fingers on his wrist. He raises his hand to look. There’s nothing there.

Cas’s voice. _“Dean, if you’re in there — hold on. We’re coming for you.”_

But they’re not. He’s hallucinating; the isolation’s finally driven him mad. It never used to happen quite this quickly, in the Pit —

_“Dean,”_ a choked half-sob, and that voice is _Mom._

Something cracks.

He’s up the stairs in less than two heartbeats, yanking on the handle of the bunker’s front door. It doesn’t budge. He pulls harder. An alarm is sounding, red lights blaring on the walls. Dean twists the handle, hurls his entire bulk into wrenching at the door.

Nothing. _“He’s,”_ someone’s saying, and, _“Dean?”_ and he’s lost it, he’s fucking lost it, he’s hearing voices and they’re not here, none of them are here, they’re gone and they’re never coming back —

_The sewer pipe,_ says something, remote and logical, in his mind. _Nothing but concrete —_

That’s right. There’s an old sewer pipe behind a wall in here somewhere, right? Something — a sense memory of a grenade launcher braced against his bicep, _yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker,_ but that hasn’t happened yet — that hasn’t —

“Well,” says a voice at his shoulder, cool and amused. “You’re starting to catch on.”

Dean wheels. The man is standing behind him on the balcony, hands on the railing, facing away. He’s wearing suit pants and a white shirt, nondescript. “Michael?” says Dean, for no reason he can name.

Alastair turns. He’s smiling. There’s blood on his teeth. The bunker around him is melting, changing; the red emergency lights blur into flames. “Oh, no,” says Alastair, stepping closer. “You didn’t think you could get rid of me _that_ easy, did you, sweetheart?”

\---

Sitting at the center of the dungeon’s pentacles, swathed in chains and anointed in holy oil, Michael looks perfectly calm — perfectly serene.

He doesn’t look like Dean. He looks less like Dean than the demon who wore his skin ever did. His body is Sam’s brother’s, but the intelligence inside — the thing that gleams in Dean’s eyes — that’s alien. It makes Sam’s skin crawl.

The cap is gone, knocked from his head in the brief scuffle in the garage. Sam’s not sure if it makes things worse or better.

He and Mom both hesitate in the hall, glancing back through the double doorways. Michael’s casting thoughtful eyes over the shelves around him, sitting bound in his pool of light. Cas looms in the shadows between them, archangel blade in his hand.

“I thought for a moment, in the garage,” murmurs Mom. “I was sure —”

“Yeah, me too.” It comes out quicker than Sam means it, more quelling. He looks away. “Cas — are you sure you’re okay with this? Standing guard?”

Cas looks back at him, blade in his hand dipping an inch as he the wrinkles around his eyes tighten with concern. “Yes, Sam. Get some rest. You need it.” He swings around abruptly, left arm resolving itself from the slump of his trenchcoat. He grips Sam’s shoulder briefly; squeezes hard. “I will watch over Dean.”

It’s good that Cas thinks Dean’s still alive in there. Sam casts one more look at him, calm and blank and terrible, and isn’t so sure.

\---

Hooks in skin — yes. Fish hooks and meat hooks, all sizes, that’s what’s best. Start with one, in the meat of the shoulder, let’s say, and add another. Let it pull in the opposite direction; let it rub against the first, somewhere terrible, deep within. Embed the small ones, barbed needles. Let them sting deeper with every protestation, every scream. If the screaming starts to annoy you — hooks in the throat.

It takes patience, this process. It takes skill. Do it right, though, and leave the subject like that — moaning, dribbling, pierced from a thousand angles. Let his wounds scab over, let his tissues fester, until he’s a knot of fire, until they’ve grown into who he is, all he believes of himself. Then pull them out.

“Good,” says Alastair, when he achieves an arrangement particularly artful — particularly poetic. He comes from nowhere, often; there’s something clinical in his eyes. Occasionally they flare blue-white, a different color than what he remembers — than how they’re supposed to be.

He doesn’t move quite like Alastair should, doesn’t touch Dean quite like Alastair should. Sometimes he moves straight past him to examine his work, as if Dean isn’t there at all.

Dean shivers. He feels ashamed, and hates his shame; hates himself for wanting to get this right. To earn Alastair’s sole attention. To stop feeling so cold.

“Another,” says Alastair, and leaves without looking at Dean’s eyes.

There’s a fresh victim. A fresh tray of instruments. Dean reaches for the smallest hook, turns it over between his finger and thumb. The barb catches, not painfully, at his skin.

He’s forgetting something. Something important; something he’s supposed to know. Maybe that’s why he can’t get this right.

He takes the hook by the eye end and digs it under his own fingernail. Just for a moment. Just to remember how it feels.

\---

“Dean,” says Sam, “Remember these? Remember what we said, about — finding your way back?”

He holds the pictures up, one by one. Michael studies each briefly, then looks up past them to meet Sam’s eyes. He smirks.

“Dean.” Mom reaches out to grasp his wrists, both of them, around the cuffs. She slides back until her palms press over his fingers where they lie, curled loosely, unconcerned. “I brought you pie. Remember the pie we used to get, from Henrietta’s? This isn’t that, but Sam says it’s good. It’s from the diner in Hastings. We brought apple, and cherry — here —”

Michael laughs, low, at the scent being wafted toward his nose. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but this _is_ pathetic.”

Mom jerks back. The box falls to the floor.

“You listen to me,” she grits. “My son brought me back when I was locked in my own mind. I am _not_ going to fail at doing the same for him.”

“Oh, you will fail,” says Michael. There’s a dark smile in his eyes. “But it will be all the more tragic for watching you try.”

Cas tries. Jack tries. Even Bobby and Charlie try, fumbling through allusions to histories they never lived. Michael sits back and watches like it’s the most amusing puppet show on Earth.

They unchain him and take him, heavily guarded, to sit in the front seat of the Impala. They place his hands on the wheel.

Sam remembers a spark of sunlight, a toy soldier stuck in an ashtray. He closes his brother’s hand on it, presses Dean’s knuckles hard against the calluses of his own palm.

Cas is looking at them oddly when Sam gives up, releases Michael’s hand, closes the door again. “Dean,” he says, “do you remember Hell?”

Michael flinches.

Cas is staring. He rolls up his right sleeve, very slowly, to the elbow. Then he reaches forward — hesitates. Michael tries to jerk away, and Sam grabs him by instinct, holding him fast. On his other side, Bobby does the same.

Cas reaches, very slowly, to unknot Michael’s tie.

He pulls it free, drops it in a slither of silk to the garage floor. He undoes the buttons of Michael’s shirt, one by one, halfway down his chest. Then he pushes it back, over Dean’s shoulders, and reaches his hand inside.

His fingers settle somewhere on Dean’s left bicep, flexing visibly under the fabric of his sleeve. He looks half sick. Michael’s chin jerks up, and for a moment he looks resentful, defiant, stubborn — for a moment he looks like Dean.

The handprint. Sam remembers.

“Dean,” says Cas, again, like he’s ripping his lungs out with every word. “Do you remember Hell?”

\---

He’s falling, falling, through flames.

He isn’t falling. They’re rising up around him; his inner ear is playing tricks — there’s a hook under his collarbone, another in the beating flesh of his heart.

The skin of his shoulder is burning. A brand.

He twists his head to look at it, and rips the flesh where a hook digs into the corner of his mouth. There’s nothing there. _Dean,_ a voice is saying, and _Dean,_ and _Dean,_ and _Hell —_

The brand on his shoulder is searing; too hot, too pure to bear. He closes, and blue light blazes behind his eyelids. _Dean? It’s me. It’s Cas._

“Hurts,” he croaks, in a voice that barely seems to belong to him. He means everything. He means — he means the brand, he isn’t worthy of it, and it’s going to burn him from the inside out —

The burning in his shoulder redoubles. _Dean!_

He can’t stop it. His back arches, against his will, and he screams, and screams, and screams, like he hasn’t in twenty years.

Twenty years? It’s too late — too soon. It isn’t supposed to happen like this, not yet —

_What_ isn’t supposed to happen?

_Dean, it’s Cas. I know it seems hopeless where you are, but you just need to come with me, okay? Come with me, and we can get you out._

Who’s Cas? Why would an angel —

There’s no such thing as angels —

Why is he carrying memories he shouldn’t have yet? _What happened?_

_Dean, I’ll hold on. Stay with me — stay with me — I won’t let you go —_

“Stay with me, kid. Hey. You okay?”

A hand gripping his shoulder, bare where the sleeve is torn. Water across his face. He splutters, coughs, blinks into the stabbing light of the sun.

The man leaning over him is bearded, greasy-flanneled, stubbly. Hunter? Trucker? Trucker, Dean decides.

He releases Dean’s shoulder, sits back on his heels. Dean struggles to get his bearings. Gas pumps, away across the patchy asphalt; rows of semi trucks and trailers. A chainlink fence, with a bar on the other side, vacant and dusty-looking by light of morning. Is it morning? The sun is high.

What happened? His whole body aches. He struggles to sit up; it’s like his arms are pinioned behind him. He realizes, after a moment, that that’s because they are: caught in the sleeves of Dad’s leather jacket, shrugged — or yanked — halfway down to his elbows.

There’s blood on the collar, and a scent of sour vomit. Dean turns to see a pool of it. There’s another stain on his sleeve.

“Shit,” he says, “my dad is gonna kill me.”

“Kid,” says the trucker again, with a tentative kindness, “I don’t know what happened to you, but if home isn’t safe, there are places I can get you to —”

Disgust snakes through Dean’s gut. He’s not sure if it’s for the trucker or himself. “Jesus, dude, I’m twenty-three,” he snaps. Then, when the trucker doesn’t seem to get it, “Fuck off.”

The guy takes an affronted minute to obey. Dean glares after him until he disappears, then spits in the dry grass, in a vain attempt to rid his mouth of its foul taste.

_I don’t know what happened to you._ Neither does Dean, not really. He checks the back of his jeans; no gun. He wouldn’t have brought it, though, if he was planning to —

It doesn’t fucking matter. A fight, a fuck, just a really shitty night at the bar — so long as he’s not forgetting _hunts_ yet, he’s fucking peachy, thanks.

Dad won’t even murder him over the jacket. Dean can clean it long before they see each other again; shit, it might be weeks. Weeks of brusque assignments and texted check-ins. A poltergeist in Cheyenne, a vamp in Las Cruces —

Wait. Vamps. As in fucking _vampires?_

Dean shakes his head. He must be more fucked up than he thought. It’s been rough since Sammy left, that’s all; it takes a little time to find a rhythm. To get used to the idea that futures are for other people, that you’re just a soldier. Always have been, always will be.

Which is stupid. He always knew that. He never — he never _really_ — wanted anything else.

No phone or wallet in his pockets. Maybe it was the trucker; maybe his nice guy thing was just an act. That’s okay. Dean carries Baby’s keys inside his boot.

He just needs to find where he left her. She’ll be there. She won’t fucking ditch him for California.

The left side of his face is numb. He touches it, and his fingers come away sticky. Another night for the cold case files.

He gets to his feet gingerly, and limps his way along the fence the way the shadows point him, toward the highway’s thrum.

 

### II.

For an instant, when Michael collapses, Sam really thinks they’ve won.

He’s on the floor, and shaking. His eyes roll back in his head. And then he’s opening them again, and laughing — laughing — and it’s Dean’s throat, but it isn’t Dean’s voice.

“Better,” he says, hoarse. “Much better. You almost tracked him down. I’ve buried him deeper, though, now — a shame. For you.”

Sam grits his teeth. “What do you _want,_ ” he bites out.

Michael leans forward. He offers Sam a secret smile. “To see what happens,” he breathes.

They’re rough, dragging him back to the dungeon; Mom’s jaw is stony. They’ve barely got him secured back in his chair when a knock sounds on the door, and Noah leans in, his hair swinging. “Sam? There’s — a girl outside. She says she wants to speak to you.”

He glances at Cas as he speaks, uneasy. Some of the Apocalypse World hunters are still pretty reluctant about cooperating with angels.

Sam follows his gaze. Cas has been guarding Dean day and night, and after that — it seems unfair to leave the duty to him once again.

“Go,” Cas says.

He goes.

Mom shadows him up the stairs, Bobby joining them in the war room. Sam checks his guns.

“Oh — not that outside,” says Noah as Sam puts his foot on the first stair to the balcony. “The garage.”

Sam blinks, but — okay. He leads the way. Bobby and Mom move to flank him as the doors are lifted; as the outer doors creak open.

Standing there in the moonlight is —

No. Not standing; sitting. She’s in an antique-looking wheelchair, wood and wicker and strange symbols carved into the frame. She tilts her head. She smiles, slowly, like she did the first time they met.

“Hey, Sam,” says Meg.

\---

The dog has been following him for the last mile and a half.

Dean glimpses him occasionally, Jack Russell ears over the sagebrush. Then he’ll go a minute — ten minutes — with nothing, and he’ll think it’s given up, gone home. He turns to scan for it again. The shotgun in his duffel bangs against the small of his back.

The dog is standing twenty yards behind him, panting happily.

“Go home,” Dean tells it, “you can’t come.” He stoops to find a rock on the ground. Small enough to only sting. He can’t quite bring himself to throw it.

The sun is sinking behind slashes of fine cirrus clouds, lighting them pale blue and gold. It’s quiet out here, just a few stray birdsongs and the wind. It kneads the grass until it ripples like a river, like a flowing thing. Its course is broken only by the two straight, weary ruts, pointing on toward the horizon.

Dean’s already taken Baby as far as he’s going to, down this road. A washout too deep for her to nose her way over forced him to leave her, pulled just off the track. She’s only a few hundred yards off the gravel road that got him here, an adventure itself; twenty miles or more from asphalt. Improbably, she’s only a few feet from the edge of a fallow field — the only cultivated ground way out here in the prairie. Some farmer is running his disker in sedate circles there, miles from anything, around and around under the September sky.

This has to be his dog. It took Dean several minutes to chase it out of the Impala, after it leaped joyfully inside. It left dusty pawprints all across the seats. Sam would laugh his ass off if he saw this, a dog in the car —

It hopped into the trunk, too, as Dean filled his weapons bag, paws balancing unsteadily on the spare magazines and loose shells. At least now he knows it isn’t a demon; the Devil’s Trap would —

There is no Devil’s Trap. He doesn’t know about Devil’s Traps, not yet.

So: the dog. “You have an owner,” Dean tells it. “He’s probably looking for you.”

The dog considers this. He takes a few steps closer. He seems to be smiling.

“You can’t come with me. I’m hunting ghosts.” Why the hell he needs to worry about ghosts all the way out here, he doesn’t know. Dad says that hunting season’s starting soon, and guys camp out here for antelope; that some might take shelter in the old foundation by the old Bourne cemetery. In spite of the stories. That some of them might not have _heard_ the stories. It’s a pretty obscure hunt, even for them.

But, hell. Dean does what he’s told. Dad’s making some noise about a voodoo thing down in New Orleans, something about the hurricane uprooting supernatural geography, all the loose spirits and displaced curses swirling in the floodwaters — if that’s where Dean’s going next, he’ll do it. _I’m getting close,_ John keeps saying. _We’re going to find it; we really are this time._

He’s been getting close for more than twenty years.

That thought’s fucking sacrilege. Dean shakes his head, and drops the shovel off his shoulder. “So,” he says, to the dog. “You’re just going to keep following me, huh.”

Its ears arch. It turns its head, quizzically, as if aware of just how fucking cute it is.

“All right. You win. Let’s get you home.”

The dog barks, once; it leaps out of his way, play-bowing, as Dean starts back the way he came. It trots at his heels. It prances. His boot nearly clips it under the chin.

By the time they’re back at the car, there’s no one there. The farmer’s truck is gone. Dean wades through the grass, the hundred yards more to the road. It’s desolate. The dog looks up at him, as if to say, _What now?_

What now? He could drive back out of here, try and find a door to knock on. Ask some rancher, _Do you know whose dog this is?_ Try not to explain what a drifter in a muscle car is doing in the middle of the high lonely plains of Montana, in a place it seems like even the rain forgot.

He could camp out with the dog here. See if the guy comes back for him in the morning.

There’s a rumble of wheels; a column of dust rising from the gravel road. Dean turns and squints, and sees it, sun flaring off the hood: the truck. It takes a long minute for it to make its way down the road. Dean steps out into more obvious view, hails it with one arm raised high.

The truck pulls to a halt. The driver’s face is invisible under a cowboy hat, pulled low. Dean says, “I think I’ve got your dog.”

“Put him in the bed, then,” says the driver, jerking his thumb.

The dog wags his tail, stubby and energetic, as Dean stoops to lift him. It takes him a moment to figure where to put his hands, to take the dog’s weight; he never spent much time around dogs as a kid. Not like Sammy at his friends’ houses, with all their golden retrievers and their dining room tables and their real china plates. He lifts the dog over the tailgate, deposits it in the bed of the truck.

It does an immediate lap, sniffing, claws clicking on metal. The driver shifts the truck into gear. Dean steps back. The dog trots back to the tailgate, ears perked. It watches him as it goes, stump of a tail still wagging high. Then it’s around a corner, shrinking, a dot on the horizon and a plume of dust.

Dean’s still got an hour, maybe, of twilight. It’ll be well past full dark by the time he reaches the cemetery, nearly eight miles away. He could sleep in the Impala, instead; he could lay back on the hood and watch the stars. They’re probably spectacular out here.

An airplane tracks a lazy course across the sky, leaving a shining trail in its wake. It’s 35,000 feet up — nearly seven miles away. Closer than the nearest house.

He’s already packed and ready. There’s a flashlight in his bag with extra batteries. His shoulder aches, a little, from carrying it; that black dog injury from two states back won’t quite leave him alone.

He hitches the strap higher, and shifts the shovel to his left hand. He turns his back on the car, on the road, and starts, once again, toward the ghosts.

\---

“Meg,” says Sam. “I thought you were dead.”

“Yes, well.” Her chair rolls forward, under no apparent power. Her hair is blonde and shining, sleek where it once was like straw. Her legs are folded neatly in front of her, high black boots swallowing the light. “Sometimes, when the Empty convulses enough to expel something — other things sneak through.” Her smile widens. “How _is_ Clarence?”

“Sam,” says Bobby, slowly, “who is this girl?”

Ruby’s knife is in Sam’s pocket. He tightens his grip on its hilt. “Demon,” he says, shortly. “What’s with the chair?”

She shrugs, careless. “Resurrection’s a tricky business. The parts don’t always come through right. Nervous system, axonal myelination — you know how it goes.”

“Why not just smoke out?” Mom demands. “Find another vessel?”

Meg smiles slowly. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not here vessel-hunting; I know you’ve all got your handy-dandy tattoos. Besides, I like this one.” She circles. Her wheels spin, unpropelled, and she’s abruptly facing Sam again. “You boys have been _busy,_ since I left.”

“What do you want, Meg,” Sam bites out.

“For you to _stand down.”_ Her answer is immediate, ringing, snapping out of her like a whip. She’s staring into Sam’s eyes, the smile dropped from her lips. “Imagine my surprise, to finally finish putting myself back together — Crowley gone, the Knights and Princes out of the way — only to discover that _you’ve_ declared yourself King of Hell. _In absentia,_ no less.”

Sam feels his jaw go slack. “I didn’t —”

“Tell that to all the demons insisting on their undying loyalty to little King Sam,” Meg hisses.

Sam swallows.

“There’s nothing for you here,” says Bobby, taking a step forward. “Take your demonic ass and get out.”

But Sam’s remembering something — something else. Sitting embroiled in research at a table in a strangely darkened bunker; turning to see Crowley behind him. A battle. A shot in the chest. He says, “Wait.”

All three of them turn to stare.

“Wait,” he says again. There’s no sense hiding his need; it will sway Meg. Make her think she can get whatever she wants from him. He swallows, lets it show on his face. “There’s something you can do for me. In return.”

Her expression cools, sharpens. “And what’s that?”

“I’ll show you. Inside.”

“What’s to make me think your goons won’t jump me the second I cross your threshold?”

Sam smiles thinly. “Meg,” he says, “if I wanted them to — trust me, you’d already be dead.”

But Meg only inclines her head. “Tell that to this one,” she says.

Sam turns.

Noah is standing squarely in the middle of the doorway. He’s shaking slightly. There’s a rifle to his shoulder, a little red dot skittering where he trembles on the aim. At this range, though, there’s no question.

He’s not aiming for Meg. He’s sighting directly — as near as he can get — for Sam’s heart.

“Sam, I’m sorry,” he says, in a wavering voice. “I’m just — it’s only until the others finish. I can’t let you back in.”

Sam steps forward. “Until they finish what?”

Noah pales, the trembling in his arm more pronounced. “Stop,” he says, in a higher voice. “Stop, or I’ll —”

“Until they finish _what,”_ Sam repeats. Noah is shaking like a leaf. He takes another step, puts both hands on the rifle’s barrel, wrenches it away.

Noah makes a sound like a sob. He drops to the floor with his hands over his face. Sam steps past him, breaking into a run. He can hear Mom and Bobby close behind.

He doesn’t turn to see if Meg follows.

There are shouts from somewhere deeper within the bunker. They nearly skid past the kitchen. Then Mom says, sharply, “Sam, wait,” and he hears the little moan.

Maggie is on the floor, arms wrenched behind her, ankles tied. Mom drops to her knees beside her, speaking quickly as she works loose the knots. “What happened? Where’s Jack?”

“He went to try and stop them,” Maggie gulps, through a gasp of pain. “They’re trying to kill Michael. You need to _hurry.”_

Mom shoots a look at Sam, in the doorway. He doesn’t need telling twice. He runs.

He can hear wheels whirring behind him, now, and when he looks back, there’s Meg, right behind Bobby. They’re turning the last corner before the dungeon, rounding the bend —

Sam hesitates. He turns, and presses the rifle into Bobby’s hands. “Cover me.”

Bobby looks pale, but determined. Sam realizes, an instant too late, that he might have things wrong here. This isn’t their Bobby — he has no reason to be loyal to Dean over his own men. He has every reason to want Michael dead, no matter the cost.

They’re frozen like that, for an instant. Then Bobby says, gently, “I got you, son.”

Sam rounds the corner empty-handed.

Cas is on his knees in the center of the hallway. A ragged ring of holy oil burns around him, hastily thrown; it’s spattered on the walls. He’s curled over something in his hands, protective; blood’s dripping from his nose to the floor. Jack’s standing over him, fists raised in a puny shadow of a fighting stance. His left eye is bruised and swollen.

None of the surrounding hunters seem to want to hit him again. One of them — Brian — has his hand hovering over a bloody sigil on the wall.

“Give us the blade,” pants the hunter with the big, round face and graying hair. Ray. Sam’s always liked him.

“No,” snarls Castiel.

“We don’t want to banish you. We won’t have a choice —”

“Go ahead.” Cas lifts his face, voice grating, defiant. His eyes catch Sam’s, for just a moment. Then they rise to Ray’s face. “Wherever I go, the archangel blade goes too.”

There will be time for apologies later. Sam draws his pistol, sights once, and fires.

Brian lets out a howl of pain as the bullet slams his hand into the wall. The angel-banishing sigil flares white, and Cas does, too; the holy oil smokes out. The next moment, Jack is standing alone over an empty patch of floor. He wheels, fists dropping.

“My _hand!”_ Brian is on the floor. He looks wildly at Sam. “You _shot_ me!”

“Sorry,” says Sam. He advances slowly. He doesn’t put his pistol away. “You tried to kill my brother.”

Ray takes a step forward. “Sam,” he says, and his eyes are pleading. “We don’t even know that it _would_ kill him. Surely, with Michael in our hands, it’s worth the risk —”

Sam says, “No.”

Ray’s eyes track over his shoulder. “Bobby —”

Sam hears Bobby’s footsteps down the corridor, measured. Coming closer. He doesn’t turn.

“Stand down, boys,” Bobby says.

There’s a moment of collective tension. Then, Ray’s shoulders slump. He reaches into his waistband to pull out his gun, sets it slowly on the floor. After an instant’s hesitation, the others disarm, as well.

Guns and angel blades clatter on the tile. Sam stays where he is. Even Brian is discarding his weapons, panting with pain, hand still held to his chest.

“Sorry, Chief,” says Ray, at last meeting Sam’s eyes. He looks ashamed. “I’m guessing we’re not welcome here, anymore.”

Sam holds his gaze. “You’ll receive medical attention if you need it. Then — if you still want to be part of the war effort — you’ll be moved to another chapter house.” He feels something in his chest soften; he can read from Ray’s face that this danger, at least, has passed. “Trust me; I know what it’s like to want revenge so badly you don’t care who you go through to get it. But you’re not going through Dean.”

Ray looks down. “He killed ‘em,” he says, quietly. “My wife and kids. Killed ‘em himself.”

“And you’ll have your shot,” promises Sam. “But not like this.”

Behind Ray, in a sudden burst of motion, the third man — Cal — dives for the pile of weapons.

Jack is closest. He twists to catch him — too late. Cal’s got an angel blade, and he’s up and running — silent, no scream of fury, his face merely twisted with hate — running for the dungeon, for Michael, for Dean.

Bobby swears loudly. Sam lunges to follow, feels a blade roll under his foot; he collides heavily with Jack. Michael is laughing.

If Dean gets hurt, he won’t heal him. He’ll leave it hanging: a threat. What will happen if they kick him out —

Sam drags himself upright. Cal’s inside the circle now, wrenching Dean’s head back by the hair, raising his blade to strike —

And suddenly he’s flying upward, slamming hard against the ceiling. The blade slips from his senseless fingers to fall, with a harmless clatter, to the floor.

Sam staggers forward. Dean’s untouched, Michael smirking. After everything — his hair rumpled, shirt half off his shoulders, fresh from attempted murder — he hardly looks concerned.

Sam hears the genteel click of wheels rolling up behind him. “Ah,” says Meg. “I see why you wanted my help.”

A drop of blood hits Sam’s forehead. He looks up. Cal’s nose is bleeding. His face is twisted with helpless fury, eyes brimming with tears.

Meg’s gaze follows Sam’s. She takes in the man on the ceiling. “Oh,” she says. “That was insensitive of me. Shall I let him down?”

 

### III.

The ghosts don’t go easy. It’s an eight-mile hike in to find them, even after Dean’s false start, and when he gets there, he practically needs to salt and burn the entire cemetery.

Granted, it’s a small cemetery: windblown and desolate, monument to one family’s failed attempt at conquering the frontier. There are graves for little babies — those, at least, Dean doesn’t have to touch — and graves for the mother and father, the grandmother. When he’s smoked those three, though — three badly marked graves to dig solo, through rocky soil, thanks very much — there’s still something out there. Something stalking at the edges of his firelight and blowing away his salt lines and chilling the night air.

It doesn’t make sense. The only graves left are of infants and kids, but no one’s reported any ghosts of children, here. The figure Dean glimpses through the shadows is tall, well built, in his thirties at least. But there are no other adults buried here.

Dean prowls farther from the firelight, shovel ready to swing. It’s old-school iron for exactly this reason. “Come out, little ghostie,” he murmurs under his breath.

It flickers into form.

It’s standing over a grave, a simple one. Just a plain, crooked slab, with the words _Son Tommy — 1895–1906,_ half hidden under the lichen encrusting the stone.

Tommy was the second son, and the second longest-lived. His older brother was the only one who ever left.

“Wallace,” says Dean, slowly. “That you?”

If he remembers right, Wallace Bourne moved to California. Tried to get in on the fading gold boom; probably got syphilis instead. He’s listed in one of those later census as occupation: _Drunk._ Those California census-takers apparently had a sense of humor.

A scent of bad whiskey colors the frigid air. Wallace turns, and his eyes are bag-like, coat worn and rumpled and stained.

“That _is_ fucked up,” Dean tells him. “What’d you do, drink yourself to death so you could come back and haunt the grave of your little brother?”

Wallace Bourne snarls, and launches himself for Dean’s throat.

It’s the speed of it that takes him by surprise. He’s too late with the shovel — it’s knocked from his hand before he can make a good swing. He yells as he falls backwards, the ghost’s hands around his throat, and the shotgun on his shoulder clatters loose.

The stars _are_ incredible out here. He can see the Milky Way, past Wallace’s head. It’s blurring with spots, fire spots, sun spots, his own breath being choked from his chest —

Would it be so bad, to go like this? He always figured he would, sometime or another. Things would be simpler. No more checking his phone for a call that won’t come, no more pool halls, no more hunts — no figuring out how the hell he’s supposed to negotiate New Orleans right now, how do you even _get_ into the city —

His scrabbling fingers find the gun. He jams down the trigger without aiming, and fire flares down his side, rock salt embedding itself in his skin. The ghost shrieks, and disappears.

Dean drags himself upright, leaning heavily and gasping for air. The shovel’s a few yards away. He grabs it, then gropes in his pocket for the salt canister, casts a hasty circle around the grave.

His back is already screaming with the effort of three graves dug; his skin under his ripped shirt is bleeding freely. He grits his teeth, and pries shovel- after shovelful from the ground. He has to pause, from time to time, to renew his salt circle. He’s running dangerously low. Wallace prowls outside it, flickers, screams.

The first two feet of a grave are the easiest. After that, it only gets more daunting. The long handle of his shovel is awkward in the small space. Each load of dirt is smaller, the boulders harder to pry loose.

He throws one, the size of his head, at Wallace. Just out of spite. It sails through his chest. Wallace blinks, then gives him a nasty look.

By the time Dean finally makes it down to the bones, Wallace’s shoulders are slumped. He looks almost resigned. Maybe he never wanted to be a ghost in the first place. Maybe he’d been drinking to forget his brother was dead; maybe, by the time it killed him, he finally had.

Maybe he’s ready to move on.

“Wonder how that feels,” Dean mutters. He empties his last shotgun shell of rock salt onto the bones and pulls out a book of matches. He’s still got plenty of lighter fluid, but he lets it all glug out anyway. The flames, when they flare up, reach higher than his head.

Wallace is starting to spark, too, eyeing the fire with longing. Dean steps out of his way, scratches the salt line clear. He watches the ghost of the older brother who came back as it vanishes into the flames.

Afterward, after the sky has begun to lighten and all the fires have burned to ash, Dean sits on a boulder, shirt off, and cleans his wounds. It stings, but the sting is welcome, grounding. Light is spreading upward slowly from the horizon, in pastel bands of pink and green and blue. The waning moon hangs low.

He looks over the wreck of it — the carcass of a family curse, burned low — and wonders if Dad didn’t send him here for a reason after all. Wonders how stupid his ghost would look, haunting the Stanford campus for the rest of time. If there’s even a chance in hell he’d have the courage to go on.

\---

Cas isn’t back yet; isn’t answering his phone. The mutineers are patched up, to the best of Maggie’s abilities, and confined to their rooms. The rest of the hunters — Ray and his friends tied up some of them, barricaded the others in the firing range — are recovering, moving slowly, murmuring to one another in shocked tones. Sam leaves them to Bobby and Jack and Mom.

Meg is waiting in the dungeon where he left her. Her hands are folded, almost ladylike, in her lap.

“Shall we?” she says.

\---

Cedar Rapids is halfway from Montana, and Dean stops there on his second day on the road.

He’s being lazy — dawdling. He could cover the trip in thirty-six hours, if he had to, even with a short stop for sleep. But he gets a hotel room in Fargo and crashes, conks out for twelve hours or more, and then wakes up with his body aching even more than it was, with his soul sick and weary.

Maybe he’ll stop by Palo Alto, after New Orleans. Just to — see Sam. Make sure he’s doin’ good. Dean doesn’t even have to show his face.

So he stops again in Cedar Rapids. Laziest fucking day of his life. He’s always liked it here, though; never worked a case here. Not even once. He likes to watch the sun setting over the river, the late-summer green of the trees.

When he opens the door of his motel room — he’s Steve Martin today, sometimes Dad’s aliases are straight-up embarrassing — there’s a girl sitting on his bed.

Dean stops dead in the doorway. His gun is in the back of his jeans. “Uh,” he says. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m pretty fucking sure I don’t have an appointment.”

“Hey, Dean,” says the girl — she’s smiling like she knows him — and she pulls out a pistol and shoots him, straight through the chest.

\---

Dean’s head snaps back on his neck, when Meg goes streaming in.

Sam waits, tense. Meg’s vessel is slumped and silent in her chair; Michael — Dean — is the same in his bonds. A minute passes, two. Sam paces. He checks the round in the chamber of his gun.

Dean’s body arches again without warning. Black smoke whirls out of his mouth; coils, seeking; finds Meg.

She sits up slowly, as if it hurts. Nothing else happens. In his chair, Michael begins to laugh.

“What happened?” Sam asks. He grips the back of her chair. “Did you try the gun thing?”

Meg grimaces. “Yes.”

“I think you will find,” says Michael, like he relishes the words, “that I am a subtler opponent than Gadreel.”

Meg looks — sick. Almost scared.

“He’s buried him deep, Sam,” she says, slowly. There’s no hint of mockery in her tone. “I think he pulls him deeper every time you get close.”

“I don’t care,” says Sam. “Try again.”

\---

The shot catches Dean hard in the chest.

For a moment, he sees white. His skull cracks back hard against the asylum floor, and he’s on fire, the wind punched out of him. “Sam!” he manages, on his first good breath.

Sam is looming over him, face grim and remote. He looks _young,_ little licks of curls over the tips of his ears, face pointed and raw with anger.

That’s stupid, though, that Sam should look young. He’s grown up, at Stanford. He looks older than Dean ever wants to admit, to either of them.

“Sam,” he says again, “we gotta burn Ellicott’s bones, and this will be over. You’ll be back to normal.” Like he has any right to declare what’s normal for his brother, these days.

“I am normal,” Sam sneers. “I’m just telling the truth for the first time. I mean, why are we even here? ‘Cause you’re following Dad’s orders, like a good little soldier? Because you always do what he says — without question? Are you _that desperate_ for his approval?”

It’s selfish, Dean knows. It’s selfish, and more than a little masochistic, and if anyone ever asks him, he’ll swear to his grave that he only wanted Sam distracted. That he didn’t care — that he already knew —

“So what are you gonna do, huh?” He presses hard on the release on the magazine, gritting his teeth against the pain in the muscles of his chest. He has to shake it, a little, to knock the cartridge loose. It falls soundlessly into the fabric of his coat. “Are you gonna kill me?”

Sam’s still got the shotgun pointed dead at Dean’s face. That’s going to suck, if he pulls the trigger. “You know what,” he says, “I am sick of doing what you tell me to do. We’re no closer to finding Dad than we were six months ago.”

Finding Dad — that’s right. Dad’s still alive; they’re trying to find Dad. What the hell else would they be trying to do?

“Well, then here,” Dean says. “Let me make it easier for you.”

He holds the pistol out to Sam.

It’s the hesitation that nearly tears him apart. The moment of pause. He could believe — if it was instantaneous, furious, he could believe —

“ _Take_ it!” he snarls.

Sam does.

Shit.

He didn’t check the chamber. Shit, shit, shit.

He doesn’t remember chambering a round. He might have. It’s not like he could check subtly, not one-handed —

“You hate me that much?” he breathes, abruptly unafraid. What does it matter? “You think you could kill your own brother? Then go ahead. Pull the trigger. Do it!”

Sam’s face twists. His fist jerks. And Dean feels hot lead strike his chest.

He understands — somewhere — that it didn’t happen like this. Not really. That he wouldn’t die for another few years yet, the first time. He sees, as if in double vision, Sam frowning at the empty chamber, pulling the trigger again and again. Blood dribbles across his lips. His heart has stopped; how’s that? This Sam is melting into Meg — who’s Meg — sinking to her knees beside him. “Dean,” she’s saying, and, “Dean, damnit, it isn’t supposed to work like this — you’re supposed to realize it’s a _trick_ —”

Another voice somewhere responds, low and amused, _“He isn’t built like that. He’ll always go deeper. See?”_

The darkened asylum is shifting around him. It’s a hotel room, almost as dingy and barely brighter, with weak rays of sunlight straining through curtains of a material that looks something like used hospital linens crossed with spiderwebs. Dad’s snoring on the other bed, and Sammy’s curled in a tight knot on Dean’s left.

He’s too gangly, these days, to comfortably share a bed. The covers are twisted around him, hiding his face.

Dean glances down at his chest. It’s bare, bruised and aching — werewolf claw marks. He feels like he’s been kicked by a horse.

_“Dean,”_ someone’s saying, _“goddamnit —”_

He shakes his head, and the voice fades. He doesn’t think he remembers the hunt; maybe he hit his head. Maybe he raided Dad’s medical whiskey and went a little too hard.

_“Dean —”_

He squashes it down, and worms out of bed to go see what he can find for breakfast.

 

### IV.

“Sam,” says Meg, breathing hard, “I think it’s got to be you.” 

There’s a streak of blood at the corner of Dean’s mouth, this time. Michael’s sagging in his bonds; it takes him a moment, this time, to draw himself upright.

Sam glances between them. “What do you mean, it’s got to be me?”

“He’s not _seeing_ me,” says Meg. She looks exhausted, sweaty and pale. “He’s writing me into whatever story he’s living. I think you might be able to break through.”

“Meg.” Sam stares at her, uncertain. “I can’t get _in._ I’m not a demon.”

“Spare me the bullshit, Sam.” Even her sarcasm sounds worn thin.

He spreads his hands helplessly. “Don’t you think I’d have _tried_ that, if I could?”

His words seem to sink in slowly. She turns with an expression somewhere between indignation and disbelief. “Do you mean to tell me I’m being throne-blocked by a Sam Winchester who _hasn’t even remembered he has powers?”_

“My powers haven’t worked since I got out of the Cage. Not even once,” Sam tells her. “You know that.”

“Well, yeah, but I figured —” She stops. “Seriously. You’re _still_ repressing them? Even with Lucifer dead? _Seriously?”_

Sam feels his words sputter and die. He wouldn’t even know — if he had powers — if he could use them, without — without —

He shakes his head. His lips have forgotten how to speak.

“I can’t believe I’m training the competition,” Meg mutters. “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

\---

There’s a couple eggs and a carton of milk in the minifridge, still fresh, and the pancake mix is a little clumpy, but it blends well enough when Dean beats it with a fork. He uses a saucepan for a mixing bowl — the rental didn’t exactly come with a well equipped kitchen — and tries to set the dented frying pan on the burner with minimum clatter. The coil heats slowly, glows red. He turns his hands back and forth in the air above it, to warm them.

They’ve got a half empty bottle of Aunt Jemima’s that Dean’s been lugging around for three states. He’s grabbing it from the cupboard over the stove as Sam pads over, already bundled in his oversized jacket — a Carhartt knockoff. It makes him look like a deflated football.

He’s walking on tiptoes, touching the linoleum with as little of his bare feet as he can. “Syrup toast?” he asks, hopefully.

Dean spares him a glance. Sam looks rumpled and fresh-faced, healthy, a little tan. There’s a crease from the pillowcase across his left cheek, acne threatening on his chin. A surge of love hits Dean’s ribcage, hard, out of nowhere; nearly knocks him sideways. _I’d die for him._

“Pancakes,” he says, levelly. “Got a real stove, we might as well use it. Put some socks on.”

For a moment, Sam doesn’t move. His gaze follows Dean’s arm, still bare and goosebumped, to where he holds the spatula; his mouth tightens slightly. Then he goes.

Moody fucking teenager. “Get your homework done last night?” Dean calls after him.

It’s an easy ritual, familiar. Of course Sam got his homework done; he always gets his homework done. But Sam looks up from his duffel, elbow-deep in army-rolled t-shirts, with a scowl stabbing across his face. “It’s a lot easier to get work done,” he mutters, “without _him_ here glowering at me.” He spares a contemptuous glance for the other bed.

“Shit, Sammy,” says Dean, as lightly as he can, “‘glowering’? Sounds like an SAT word to me. Pancake’s up.”

He ignores the twinge in his chest. The SATs are still months away; Sam’s been talking about them, a lot, when Dad’s not around, but — that’s all it is. Sammy’s always been competitive. He just needs this, that’s all — just needs to prove he’s every bit as smart as these stuck-up civilians. Prove he can beat them at their own game.

Sam still wants to be a hunter. Obviously. He’s only been pestering Dean and Dad to take him along since he was ten years old.

“Did someone say pancakes?”

The covers on the far bed heave, seismic, and then Dad’s sitting up. He glances between them for a moment; taking in Sammy’s bitch face, no doubt. He scratches the stubble on his jaw.

“Second one’s all yours,” says Dean, flipping it.

Sam huffs as he takes his seat at the kitchen table. Maybe his perfect family would make the whole batch before eating, or something. Keep them warm in the oven, sit down and hold hands and say grace or sing kumbaya or whatever before digging in. He looks affronted enough by the paper plate on the table in front of him. He ignores it in favor of pulling on one thick wool sock, then the other.

Dad yawns, and moves around them both to the coffeemaker. “Thanks, Dean.”

Dean flips the pancake onto another plate, and pours batter for the third. It sizzles appealingly. He reaches to twitch back the curtains over the sink, letting the daylight in now that Dad’s up, and flinches internally — curtains shouldn’t feel _greasy._

The coffee pot bubbles. Dad moves to the table, and slathers his pancake in syrup. _Not that much,_ Dean doesn’t say, _it won’t all soak in, you’ll waste it, we’ll need to buy more —_

“Mm,” says Dad, a little theatrically, closing his eyes as he chews. “As good as your mom’s.”

_That’s a lie,_ some part of Dean protests. It feels strangely distant — alien. _Mom didn’t cook. She told you that. He’s lying._

“Spare us the bullshit, Dad,” snaps Sam.

Dad’s jaw stops mid-chew. His eyes open.

“It’s shitty box mix. It’s _shitty,_ like everything we have is shitty. If you want to raise your kids like hoboes, fine, but stop pretending you’re not.”

“Sam,” says Dad, warning.

“And you,” Sam sneers, eyes flashing to Dean’s. “Stop pretending you’re Mom. It’s pathetic.”

“All right.” Dad drops his fork with a clatter. “If you’ve got this much vinegar in you, you’re going to work it out training. Come on.”

He stands with a loud scrape of chair legs on linoleum. Sam follows, mulish, face like a thundercloud. He kicks his own chair over as he follows Dad out the door.

Dean waits a long moment before he picks it up.

Their pancakes lie uneaten. Sam’s, whole and golden; Dad’s with two bites sliced off, lying congealing in its puddle of syrup. The third one is starting to smoke on the stove. Dean turns it out of habit, considers its blackened underside for a moment, then dumps the whole thing in the trash.

Which is stupid. They _have_ the food; they might as well eat it. It’ll be fine as a road snack, with peanut butter maybe —

He’ll cook the rest of the batter. In a minute. He twists the burner off, and paces to the window, suddenly helpless under a wave of furious energy; he opens the curtains by Dad’s bed.

Dad and Sam are circling each other in the parking lot, fists up. They’re not wearing gloves; you wouldn’t, anyway, for the kind of hand-to-hand you meet on a hunt —

Dad charges, feinting a punch, grappling for Sam’s waist. Sam swings out of the way, shifting his hips at the last second, and Dad lurches past him, nearly falls. Sam lets out a high, fierce, happy laugh. It isn’t a pleasant sound.

Dean’s knuckles are white where he’s gripping the windowsill. The Impala gleams black outside the window, her hood reflecting the overcast sky. Sam and Dad circle behind her, out of sight.

“Dean?” says a voice behind him.

He turns.

It’s Sam, if Sam aged twenty-some years and took up life as a mountain man. He’s freaking _enormous._ His hair is longer, curling around his ears, and a thick beard covers his cheeks. He’s wearing a hideous orange jacket, not that unlike the one now discarded by the Impala’s tires, but it actually fits him.

He looks almost as freaked out as Dean is.

Abruptly, Dean feels small; sad and useless and skinny and inconsequential. This Sam looks like he’s _seen_ things. Done things. Like he’s lived a bigger life than Dean could even fucking imagine.

“Dean?” he says again, advancing a cautious step. “It’s me. It’s Sam.”

“Yeah,” says Dean, unsteadily, “I got that.”

“This isn’t real,” says Sam, more quickly now. “You’re being possessed by the archangel Michael. He’s got you stuck down here, but it’s not _real._ I need you to fight your way free — I need you to kick him out.”

Dean swallows. What is he supposed to — punch through the walls? Like this is all a flimsy soundstage? “How do I —”

“Has anything happened that didn’t fit?” Sam asks, stepping forward again. “Things that you shouldn’t remember, that don’t feel right? When I was possessed by Gadreel, I —”

But there’s a whirlpool opening at Dean’s feet. The colors are blurring, the room is changing — Sam’s features flicker, twist, and his voice, distorts, and he’s gone.

\---

“Shit, Dean —”

_“Follow him!”_ Meg’s voice, staticky on the thread of their connection, is a command. _“Stay with him, Sam, this might be your best chance —”_

The whole room is whirling. Sam’s dizzy with it, sick — he steps forward, again — and somehow, somehow, he finds the way through.

Dean’s standing in front of another window, in another room. He’s not shirtless, this time; he’s wearing a short-sleeved button-down, smoothing a tie down his chest. He’s _tiny,_ elbows that stick out and a head too big for his chest, but he holds himself like he bears the weight of the world. It’s a gravitas that should look ridiculous on such a little kid, and it does, but —

“You know, uh,” Dean’s saying to him, “I’ve never actually been to one of these school dances before.”

He looks so damn nervous, so damn hopeful. Sam opens his mouth, but it’s not his words that come out. “Yeah. Look, about that, Dean —”

Abruptly, he recognizes the room. The bunks, the low light from the lamp, the worn-out jigsaw puzzles on the shelf — they’re in Sonny’s Home for Boys, and he’s — he catches a glimpse of himself, mustached, reflected in the windowpane — he’s Sonny.

“Your old man’s outside,” he’s saying, with a twist in his gut. “And man, he’s really something. I tried to tell him what a big night it was for you, Dean, and ask him if he could come back later, but he just said to tell you he had a job. Said you’d know what that means.”

It’s all written right fucking there on Dean’s face — the walls closing in. The inevitability of the message, the anger at his stupidity for expecting anything else. The tense misery of being caught between two worlds, two futures, two selves. He doesn’t want Sonny to see it; he wants it to be over. He wants the choice to be made.

“You know,” says Sam — Sonny — as gently as he can. “After I got out of jail, this place gave me a second chance. And it’s done the same for you, too.” His voice is steady, almost cruel in its compassion. “So, if you want — I’ll stick my neck out for you, and I’ll fight for you to stay.”

Dean’s nodding and shaking his head at the same time. Sam can see, under the fight against tears, a flash of hatred for Sonny — for making this hard. A horn sounds outside.

Dean turns as if on puppet strings.

Again, Sam can see them out the window: the Impala, Dad, little Sammy. He’s playing in the back seat, illuminated by the yard lights, a toy plane in his hand.

His brother’s face creases in a helpless smile. He drops his head. John, in shadow, turns as if to look up at the window. For a moment, Sam thinks his eyes flare blue.

Dean turns back. He’s resigned; mind made up. The pieces of his selfhood are shuffling back into place. They look more like armor, this way.

“Sonny,” he starts, sure now, but then he stops. Eyes widen. He takes a step back. “Sam?”

“Dean.” Sam lurches forward this time, babbling. “Don’t go with them — it’s Michael. It’s a trick. You have to remember. _Please —_ remember.”

Dean steps back uncertainly. “They need me.”

“ _I_ need you.” Sam’s throat is hoarse, raw; speaking is pain. “Cas needs you. Your family needs you — _please.”_

Dean’s staring at him. He says, slowly, “What’s with the beard?”

Sam’s laugh comes out choked, incredulous. “I’ve been _pretty busy_ running a war effort without my big brother to help me, okay?”

Dean’s still staring, gaze flicking between Sam and the window. There are footsteps pounding on the stairs. The door slams open.

It’s John. He looks between them, face wild. “Dean,” he says, “it’s time to go.”

Dean retreats a pace. He’s blurring, irresolute, caught somewhere between sixteen and thirty-nine. “You’re not my dad.”

Michael’s eyes flash in John’s face. He advances. “We’re going, son.”

But Dean’s shifting, changing. He’s taller, his chest expanding, jaw sharpening, deepening. His face is stubbled and weary. In his eyes, anger flames.

“I said,” he growls, “you’re _not my fucking dad.”_

 

### V.

Sam is driftwood in the torrent of Michael’s grace as it flees.

Meg has him by the slenderest of lifelines. It pulls and almost gives, and Sam reaches out with what strength he possesses — a strange, rippling strength, black cords of power he’d forgotten how to reach — and holds on. He can see glimpses, though, through the maelstrom. Dean’s fist pounding into John’s face. Dean snarling, _get out of my head, you bastard, get out —_ but he’s gone, he’s falling, falling, and he hits the dungeon floor with a crash.

The light over Dean’s head flickers, swaying. His body lurches this way, then that, yanking against the chains. Then his head wrenches back and there’s blue light pouring out of him, his mouth, his eyes his ears — filling the room, scorching the dungeon walls —

— and then it’s gone, and Dean sags limp in his chair, and Sam lets his head fall back against the wall with a sharp, exhausted exhale of relief.

There’s a nosebleed working its sluggish way down his lip. His head feels like it’s got a thousand knives driven through it. “Meg,” he says, with feeling, “thank you.”

He hears, through a tinny speaker, the sound effect of the camera on her phone. He opens his eyes, She’s tucking it back into her bag, looking disheveled but triumphant. Her face is still pale. “Thank _you,”_ she says. “That little clip should do nicely. I’ll tell my boys we fought, I spared your life — you know how it goes.”

Sam grimaces. His body hurts too much to care. “You were angling for that all along?”

Meg shrugs. “I get what I want.” she raises a hand, snaps her fingers, and is gone.

Sam sighs. He blinks hard, at the over-bright lights, and begins to consider how to lever himself upright. Dean is stirring in his chair.

“Dean!”

The voice from the door is hoarse, unhesitating, cracked with relief. And Cas is running, trenchcoat flapping, his face even bloodier than before. The knee of his pants is torn, scraped skin showing through, but he drops to the ground, heedless, in front of Dean’s chair. The archangel blade falls from his hand and rolls, coming up gently against the sole of Sam’s boot.

“Dean,” says Cas, again, more gently. He’s on his knees at Dean’s feet, like a man praying, like a supplicant; but on his face is only gratitude. He takes Dean’s hands in both of his, scab-knuckled. This time, they answer, turn in the cuffs, clasp Cas’s in return.

“Hey, Cas.” Dean’s voice is weak, almost worn through, but there’s a spark of humor in his eyes when he opens them. They linger on Cas for a moment, find Sam. “Sammy. Thanks.”

Sam’s too exhausted to speak. He slumps back against the wall, waving his hand vaguely in answer — _yeah, yeah, you’d do the same for me —_ and lets his eyes slip half-closed again. Through the haze of his lashes, he sees Cas bow his head, pressing his forehead to Dean’s knee; sees Dean stretch against the handcuff to brush reassuring fingers over Cas’s ear.

Then Cas is murmuring something, too low to hear, and rising; he’s moving around Dean’s chair, unlocking the cuffs, untying the bonds. Dean rubs his wrists as they come free. Sam hears, “— happened?” and “You’re supposed to _heal_ yourself, Cas.”

“Sam. Sammy.” He opens his eyes; time slips. Dean is on his feet, Cas bracing him. “When was the last time you got some sleep, man? Or _ate?”_

“You sound like Mom,” Sam mumbles, and sees Dean’s face spasm in an obscure sort of surprise. But then there’s another voice saying, “Damn right he does,” and Mom’s bending over him, adding, “Come on, Bobby, get his other arm — Jack, with me — you’re going to bed for a _week._ Both of you.”

“Michael’s still out there.” Dean’s voice. “I’m not sure we’ve got a week, Mom.”

“We can _handle_ it. You boys need rest. One, two —”

And Sam’s up and moving. He tries, vaguely, to be helpful with his feet, move them in something like the rhythm of walking. _Dean,_ he thinks, _I might’ve accidentally been King of Hell for a week._ Step, step. _Dean, I might still have powers._

_What if it goes bad, like last time — what if I can use them to stop Michael —_

Dean’s not answering, not really. Sam’s powers, whatever they are, don’t include telepathy — not yet, at any rate. But he can hear the answer anyway, through long practice, clear as day. _Slow down, little brother. Get some rest. We will deal with it in the morning._

_...maybe in several mornings,_ Sam agrees.

So he goes. He hears the murmur of voices from the war room, but they pass it by; hears Mom saying, “— could move them to the dungeon, if you want, now that it’s vacant. Don’t worry, Cas,” she adds, in an undertone, “I’ve got the blade.”

Then there’s something soft beneath him, and he’s being levered into bed, covers drawn up. He blinks, dimly, and a hand smooths back his hair. Lips touch briefly to his forehead.

“Can’t blame me for wanting to do that, just once,” says Mom, wry. “Sleep well, Sam.”

He does.

\---

Cas hovers as Dean moves around his own bedroom, touching his record player, his weapons, his books. They’re as he left them.

“Cas,” he tries, “I’m not that tired. I mean — I slept for a month.”

It’s a lie. Cas probably knows it’s a lie, too. Dean feels like he just ran a marathon; he feels like he wants to drop where he stands. But the pane between this world and that one still feels flimsy, insubstantial — if he sleeps, and dreams —

The fear is a stupid one. He can’t shake it. What if he goes, and slips back, and this time he never wakes up?

The look on Cas’s face is warm and worried, fond. He’s finally healed himself, after Dean demanded three separate times. He doesn’t say anything, just stands there with his eyes on Dean’s face.

_Why would an angel —_

“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you,” Dean says. “Down — down there.” Out of fairness, he adds: “I didn’t recognize Meg, either.”

Cas’s brow creases. “Meg?”

Dean flushes. “Yeah, uh — pizza man Meg? She’s alive, I guess?”

Cas does not look any less perplexed.

“Hey, I missed a lot too.” He musters a smile. “You should go — catch up with her. I mean, if you’re feeling up to it. Sam wouldn’t mind, I don’t think.”

Cas frowns. He says, carefully, “Would you — not mind?”

Dean stares. “Listen, buddy — I mean, yeah, she’s a demon, but you and her had a — you can’t say you wouldn’t be interested, it’s not like you’re getting a lot of —”

Cas’s face is shuttering, closing down. It’s happening before Dean’s eyes.

Suddenly, he’s fucking done.

“Yeah,” he says, “I mind.”

Cas freezes. His eyes snap up. They’re blank and terrible with hope.

“I _mind,”_ says Dean. He closes his eyes. His whole body feels tense, wound tight. “But I don’t wanna stand between you and a good thing, Cas. I really don’t.”

The room is silent. He can hear distant voices, somewhere else in the bunker, beyond the closed door.

“And yeah, you — I mean, you get it. I’m fucked up. I didn’t even _want_ out of Hell, Cas — you remember that, don’t you? You had to drag me. And this —” He can see the light through his eyelids from his bedside lamp. He feels raw, see-through. Might as well put it all on the table. “I’m half terrified that I’ll close my eyes and go back there and stay. Or I’ll make you come drag me out — you and Sam and — over and over again. And you’ll never get to — you’ll be so busy running around after my bullshit —”

He doesn’t know what he’s saying, really. He just feels — cracked open, obvious. Like he’s been pretending for years this is who he was, this person trapped by his circumstances, only to turn around and discover the prison is part of him. Of his own making. Maybe everyone else could see it all along.

Michael sure as hell could.

“So — go.” He thinks it’ll come out bitter, but it doesn’t. Just — weary. Empty.

Cas says, “Dean.”

The bulk of his body is moving. The light behind Dean’s eyelids drops abruptly away. He opens them, and Cas is there — haloed in it.

He touches his hand to Dean’s cheek, finger to Dean’s ear. Dean looks away. He feels like he did in that bedroom at Sonny’s, furious — he can’t take what’s being offered, he’s not —

“Dean,” says Cas again, and kisses him.

It’s not — the _best_ kiss Dean’s ever had. He’s startled, and not ready for it, and Cas is urgent, his agitation held barely in check. Their noses bump, and Dean makes a startled sound in his throat, and Cas draws back.

He takes one look at his face, says, _“Dean,”_ and kisses him again.

His hand slides over the nape of Dean’s neck, this time; the other down his hip. He’s drawing him close, tilting his head for the right angle, sliding their mouths together like he’ll —

— like he’ll fucking _bury_ Dean, cover him up, press his touch into every inch of Dean’s skin, his lips, his tongue. Swallow any counter-arguments, leave him with nothing that isn’t _Cas,_ that isn’t seen, that isn’t loved.

This time, when Cas comes up for air, he doesn’t draw back, not even a little. He stays there, forehead pressed to Dean’s, and Dean finds that at some point, his hands have fisted in Cas’s shirt.

He says: “Oh.”

Cas says: “Meg can find her own pizza man.”

Fucking pizza man. Dean almost laughs.

It comes out instead as a hitch of breath. Cas runs his fingers down the column of Dean’s throat, gentle, as if to soothe it away.

“Sleep,” he advises. “I’ll watch over you.”

The idea is appealing. Other ideas are appealing, too — finding out what other questionable skills Cas learned from his adventures with porno. Asking him again — fifty more times — if he’s sure he wouldn’t rather —

“Dean, _sleep.”_ Cas sounds exasperated; like he’d like to be more exasperated if he could stop smiling. “You’re home. _I’m_ home. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

_I forgot you._ The words are too damning, too miserable, to speak aloud, so he prays them. _He took you away._

“No,” says Cas, “he didn’t.”

All right. All right. That’ll be enough to go by. It has to be; it will be.

He closes his eyes, and leans into Cas, and lets himself believe.

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: I went and did the [tumblr thing](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/180243922744/spn-fic-the-mask-that-comes-undone-1401-coda), if you want to reblog.
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
